President Museveni has said the total peace that Uganda is currently enjoying is not by accident but rather intentional.
Addressing a rally at Leju Stadium in Terego district, West Nile on Thursday, Museveni said when NRM came to power, it was able to diagnose the country’s problems before getting medicine for them.
“Politics is like medicine. When a doctor receives a patience, he must find out what they are suffering from and if he does right diagnosis then patient gets the correct prescription and if it is correct, the patient will be healed. In the past the problem was that leaders were making long diagnosis. Some of us have been active since 1960s and saw these mistakes,”Museveni said.
“NRM has been able to achieve peace in Uganda for first time in 500 years. Some people Uganda wasn’t there before the British came.”
He explained that Uganda last had total peace between 900AD and 1400 AD during the time of Bachwezi.
“When their dynasty collapsed there was chaos and fighting between tribes until the British came. When the British came there were wars. When we got independence, the situation got worse with the fight between Muteesa and Obote in 1966 and during Amin.Even when NRM came there was no immediate peace because of Kony, LRA and Bamuze group among others.
Museveni expressed pleasure that since 2007, there has been total peace around the country but said it has not been by accident.
“From 2007 there has peace in the whole country. The reason is because of a strong army and ideological thinking. This peace is not accidental but products of other things that we did. We said no to tribal and religious sectarianism, marginalisation of women. That’s why we were able to build a strong army which can defend our country.”
He said because of the peace, the country has developed in terms of infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals and electricity among others.
Museveni however said despite the achievements, the issue of poverty has not yet been solved.
He said for the last 60 years, he has been preaching the gospel of wealth creation, starting during the days as a student in school.
“We started preaching this message of wealth creation in the 1960s while still students. Those who listened to our message is the cattle corridor of south western Uganda are now rich. Our message of wealth creation is now about 60 years old. We have been telling you not to mix development with poverty. Kampala has got a lot of development in form of hotels and tarmac roads among other but nearby is poverty in some of the homes. That’s why from the 1960s we have been telling people that get out of poverty as development is ours. This stadium here is development and is ours but poverty is personal and private. Do you sleep on the road or stadium or health facility,” Museveni said.
The NRM presidential candidate said since he came to power, a number of programs like Entandikwa, Operation Wealth Creation, Youth Fund, Emyooga, Women Fund , GROW Project and recently Parish Development Model have been introduced.
According to Museveni, these funds are meant to be utilised by Ugandans to create wealth for themselves, insisting that everyone household must be involved in wealth creation.
